Why Maico Was The MOST EVIL Motorcycle Brand That Ever Existed

It has been said that selfishness and greed is the anesthetic that nature gives us to dull the pain of being a fool and there is truth in that said in

ever

y language in

ever

y corner of the world and documented in every period of human history: our greed and ego. It has caused wars to be fought, civilizations to have families torn apart and relationships to have been shattered and greatness to have stopped in its tracks, all because of one simple concept that we as a species seem to continually struggle with and that is why we can not. seem to get along well with each other in the world of motorsports, there may be no other selfish, greedy, manipulative, despicable and backstabbing story than that of two German brothers who would rise from the ashes of a post-war Germany and create the off-road

motorcycle

more dominant. existing

brand

and in 1981 they would create an engineering Master P that was so sophisticated and advanced at the time that the geometry they created for off-road use is still used today on

motorcycle

s that you buy a machine that would be so impeccable in every way, the manufacturers Japanese guys like Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki would be so distraught by their dominance that they couldn't help but buy one for the sole purpose of dismantling it and figuring out how the hell someone could build a bike like that. well, but despite being the

most

prestigious off-road

brand

on Earth and selling more than 60 percent of all off-road machines, an eternal feud between the two brothers would erupt with the violence of Mount Tambora and the feud would become so dark that I would put family against family and brother against brother.

This is the story of how Otto and Wilhelm Mish created the

most

iconic European motorcycle brand of their time, Mako, only to allow their ego and greed to crumble their empire like the walls of Jericho, transforming them into Legends. For Lepers Overnight is a sad story of how the two brothers were somehow able to survive the most vile political regime in history but could not survive each other. This is the strange story of how Otto and Wilhelm Mish internally sabotage the Mako brand and the best dirt bike. which was once built the Mako 490 Mega 2 from 1981. In 1946, two German brothers Otto and Wilhelm Mish sit in a huge warehouse 50 kilometers south of Stuttgart, Germany, in a town called Fathigan, they have spent the last decade of their lives under control. of the most horrendous and vile regime known to humanity and like the other German manufacturers at the time, BMW Porsche and Mercedes, have been forced in recent years to bleed all their resources to support the war effort and now the World War .

II is over, they have been left with a country in ruins, the economy is broken, cities have been reduced to rubble and left uninhabitable and millions of people have been left homeless wandering aimlessly around the country with nothing but their clothes. that they were wearing and everyone is asking the same question: what the hell do we do now? and for the maish brothers they would go with what they know you see before the war or they worked for their father Ulrich in his car business which was called maishen company, they provided 24 hour car service and sold spare parts for bicycles and motorcycles and in 1935 the Maish brothers built their first complete motorcycle.

Now at that time it was nothing more than a bicycle frame powered by a small engine, but that was their first motorcycle now, after playing with many post-war ideas, the two brothers decide that the path of least resistance would be to satisfy the extremes basic transportation needs of a country that is trying to rebuild itself, so they once again focused all their attention on the development and production of motorcycles and at some point here they decided to shorten the company name myshin to Mako, so in 1949 They launched the Mako m150. It was a durable and affordable machine and was just what Germany needed at the time.

As the 1950s progress, the European economy begins to recover and Mako begins to prosper, they added an m175 and m250 to the popular m-150 motorcycle, produced a scooter that was called the Mako mobile, and even attempted to build a car. with a Heinkel engine that looked a lot like a Volkswagen Beetle, they would soon find themselves crossing paths with the German government again, although this time under better circumstances, as they would be tasked with producing 10,000 dual-sport motorcycles for the German military, which The situation invariably changed. The company's focus on off-road and racing motorcycles would pay huge dividends for Mako in the future Now, in the mid-1950s, Mako is a dominant and highly profitable European brand and everything from the outside looks perfect, but it isn't. because behind the scenes the two brothers Otto and Wilhelm are caught in a soap opera-style conflict.

Now the story remains skewed as to the exact origins of the conflict, but it's deep, dark and very dirty now in an attempt to throw some barbs towards a conclusion for the sake of this video. I could speculate that perhaps it was political since Wilhelm had been a member of the National Socialist Party and Otto had not; However, this could have been something they did intentionally to protect the future of the company by playing both sides of an unknown outcome or perhaps it was simply greed, bitterness and control because due to Wilhelm's participation in the match, he was ineligible. to be majority owner of Mako, so this gave Otto control of 60 percent of the company and 40 percent went to Wilhelm;

However, this conflict would intensify in 1957 when Wilhelm would be hit by a motorcycle and left paralyzed. Now it is unclear if he was hit by a Mako but after this accident he became nothing more than a figurehead for the company, this left the One hundred percent of the day-to-day operations in Otto's hands, so Wilhelm decides to bring his three sons, Hans Peter and Wilhelm Jr, to work for the company, but also act as his eyes and ears in daily operations. of Mako, now his son Hans was a motocross writer so he was put in charge of developing the machines for Mako Peter would be put into administration and was also in charge of the media and press and Wilhelm Jr who had some engineering skills, he was put in charge of all the technical development and production of the Mako motorcycles now, even though there is a lot of bad blood. happening behind the scenes and some very deep wounds that will be opened in the future somehow throughout the 1960s, they are able to put aside their differences and continue to grow and prosper and soon Mako would find himself right in the middle of a gold mine because as we enter the 1960s, the United States is experiencing a period of sustained economic growth and the fruits of prosperity are everywhere.

Dirt bikes are now becoming wildly popular. Motorcycles are no longer considered transportation vehicles but luxury items; However, back then they were not. There are many motorcycles specially designed for off-road use, so what riders would do is take street bikes, put some knobby tires on them, and start riding off-road. This is what gave rise to what we know as scramblers at this time in history, the Japanese manufacturers. The likes of Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and Suzuki are lagging behind when it comes to off-road development, so the only ones specializing in purpose-built off-road machines were European companies like CZ Husqvarna and Mako, and this is where Mako had an advantage. extreme. that no one else could match for the next 15 years and that was in chassis technology and geometry, whether they learned this building war machines for the Germans or luckily, nothing came close to off-road handling like a Mako, this perfection.

Obviously it translated into sales and dealers couldn't keep these bikes in stock and Mako couldn't build them fast enough. Now, as a side note, these were the good old days when a 400cc maker sold for around $1100 new, so fifty-five. one hundred dollars today, I mean, could you imagine buying a new dirt bike today for five thousand dollars? Anyway, this would culminate in 1981, when Mako would produce what many people today feel was the best dirt bike, not only of its time, but also the best dirt bike that ever

existed

. It has been built and that would be the 1981 Mako 490 Mega 2.

So what makes the 1981 Mako 490 so special? Well, in a word, everything. I don't have to be the one to tell you that a 490 CC two-stroke engine is fast, but the Mako 490 was ridiculously fast, making over 45 horsepower and weighing around 240 pounds and these are very surprising numbers for 1980 standards. The bike was so powerful that magazine testers described the power as a sock-curling burst of acceleration that falls like a window blind or has all the subtlety of a safe dropped on a cricket or all the finesse of a cannon fired on a handball court, but power itself is nothing without control and while the Mako 490 was a beast in the power department, it was also very manageable, with no bubbles in the motor , no ignition timing problems, no brutal knocks followed by huge power drops, the Mako 490's power was crisp and clean, and when you take that engine and put it in an incredible chassis, you have a motorcycle that can't be beat the Mako's handling. 490 was very precise the brakes stopped in an instant and gave you nine cents in change.

In fact, the magazine's reviewers were so impressed with the bike that they swore Mako was giving the media Works machines to test in reviews. so Mako gave any magazine the right to break down the bike they were given and check if it was original or working and that's exactly what the magazines did, they knocked down all the machines and guess what they were stuck, but the whole Mystique of the 490 It doesn't stop there, this bike was so good that Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki all bought one. Their engineers dissected the machine into pieces to find out how they built such a motorcycle and yet, after tearing it down, the best engineers in the world couldn't understand why this bike was so good and since then magazines have constantly used that Mako 490 from 1981 as a benchmark to measure other late model dirt bikes and if you cut and paste the geometry of the 81 Mako 490 it is not. so far from a modern dirt bike, so anyone who wanted the best of off-road motorcycle for racing or leisure, bought a Mako, it was that simple and it outsold Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki and class machines open combined and in In the late 70s and early 80s, the off-road world belonged to Mako, but not for long, when the 1982 Mako 490 will be launched, the enthusiasm is obviously enormous.

I mean, everyone is kneeling before the altar of Mako, ready to sacrifice their hard-earned. dollars for one of them, their 1982 models. I mean, who wouldn't want one? It has to be faster, better and more precise than the model 81. Right. Bad. It was worse and I mean, disconcerting, strange. There is no way this can be worse. I mean. It's not uncommon for a manufacturer to take a step back from time to time when building a new model and while it may not be as good as the previous year, at least it's close, still a good bike, just not the Mako 490 from 1982 the rear bushings that were installed on the bike suddenly started to disintegrate the gearboxes started exploding like popcorn the bike gains over 20 pounds and the rear shock shaft broke every two or three rides the bike 1982 was nowhere near 1981.

It's like This bike was assembled by a high school vocational class using scrap parts. I mean, Mako literally went from building the best dirt bike of all time in 1981 to building the worst dirt bike of all time in 1992. How is that possible? Well for starters the 1982 model had a unique shock concept and instead of using a tried and true rear shock manufacturer they use the Italian Corte and Koso shock. Now they had a lot of experience with cars but very little experience with motorcycles, but Mako said they chose the Corte and Koso shock because it kept costs lower, so that's not so important, the problem was that all the shocks were the wrong length and where the top part was mounted to the frame the bottom part was mounted to the swing arm, those two points were not directly aligned so when you rode the bike the suspension was pushed to one side or the other and with the time it would bend or, worse still, break.

It was so bad that company memos state that the shocks had to be hammered into their mounting points with large hammers on the underside. Also, the 1982 model gearboxes were not properly heat treated at the factory, so they started exploding into random pieces, but the worst problem I hadThey had was that the bike's rear hubs constantly failed causing major injuries to riders in a desperate attempt. To save its reputation, automation dictates that new Olean shock absorbers be supplied free of charge under warranty with the appropriate spacers to allow them to function now. These single shock absorbers cost twice as much as the Cortecoso units, but it's the only thing they can do at this time to save them.

In this terrible situation, I would also warranty the cases and start replacing the faulty bushings. At least it was trying to honor its warranty claims, but at the time no one could understand how something so strange could happen, but hey, we all make mistakes, right? The motorcycle public was willing to give Mako a second chance, so in 1983 there was pressure to right the mistakes of 1982 and restore the brand to the greatness it once enjoyed with Mako's 40+ years of experience in the off-road development. Educated engineers, you have to be able to rise to the occasion, there is no way you could survive another disastrous year of money hemorrhage like 1982.

Even Otto Mosh pressured the Wilhelm Jr factory to make the 1983 Mako a model iconic once in a generation. It couldn't just be good, it had to be great, so surely they were going to rise to the occasion and they knocked the 1983 model out of the park badly again because the 1983 model had more failures in the rear hub, more grenades in the gearbox and, although shifting to the Oleanno crash helped the motorcycle, it got so bad that the term Mako braco was coined to describe these motorcycles and with all the motorcycle malfunctions, lawsuits began. to accumulate and the final bet would pierce Mako's heart when American racer David Dion Scott would be paralyzed when his rear hub failed, his lawsuit would stop the importation of motorcycles and American dealers would return all the motorcycles they received, they were doing everything they could to distance itself from the pariah of the motorsport world, Mako, and before 1983 it was More than two years after sitting at the top of the off-road empire by building the best motorcycle of all time and after destroying its competition and its sales and becoming the most dominant and sought after brand out there, Mako would go bankrupt, but the question is how the heck.

Can you fall from grace so quickly? How could you repeat the same mistakes in 1983 that you made in 1982? You can't be that stupid. I mean, you have to work really hard to mess up that much. It's like a joke or something. We are doing this on purpose, but that is not possible, is this just a conspiracy theory? Well, remember that fight we talked about earlier, apparently the meal between Otto Wilhelm and his children has reached an epic boiling point and maybe this whole engineering disaster was orchestrated on purpose. To criticize the brand, this story is about to get crazy, obviously one of the downsides of the 1982 model was the Cortane Coso rear shock, while a great shock for cars.

Corte and Koso had little motorcycling experience and, frankly, made garbage shocks, so who approved of the court. rear shocks well that would be technical director Wilhelm Jr now at the time Wilhelm Jr blames Cut and Sew but Olene engineers say no shock would have survived with the system designed the way it was so This is not everything. On Courte and Coso, that's just the rear suspension anyway, what's with those gearboxes with grenades? Well, it turns out that the material that was being used was not properly hardened during production, so it became defective, would you like to guess who is in charge of building them?

Engine cases yes, Wilhelm Mouse Jr. In fact, in an internal company memo, Wilhelm Jr. admits that his department had used the wrong material in gearboxes, so I guess at this point it wouldn't be a surprise to wonder who is in charge of the development of those defective rear parts. centers and the materials that were used to build them, yes, Wilhelm Mouse Jr., well, let's not be critical. I mean, maybe the guy is terrible at selecting pieces, but in 1981, a drunk Wilhelm Mouse Jr. and his brother Peter were attending a family Christmas party. and they boasted to the audience that soon the two powerful families would no longer be friends and that Auto would be angry.

Well, sometimes people say stupid things when they're intoxicated, but again in 1981, Mako needed to borrow money to develop more. on the single shock design, but Wilhelm Mish and his family refused to co-sign the loan, refused to put up his company's share of collateral to secure that loan, and, in a desperate attempt to save the company at the time where Otto decides to offer his entire share of the company and his personal share of the wealth and fortune to secure the loan, that's strange, but maybe the Wilhelm family just doesn't want to take the risk at that point, anyway, Shortly afterwards a memo from a tax advisor is discovered that was written for the mouse brothers.

It is a step-by-step blueprint that tells them the exact steps they must follow to bankrupt Mako and then how to execute a takeover bid once. who declared bankruptcy. Okay, that's enough. Something suspicious is happening here. Now let's go back. For Auto, not only would he need a loan from the bank to help save Mako, but he would also call two Distributors named Brian Gross and Van Dijik, who agreed to throw a Lifeline to Mako, but the terms of these loans, as well as the Las Requests from other Distributors around the world were that if you want us to continue doing business with you and helping you, you need to get rid of the Wilhelm brothers, so obviously everyone in the industry could see what was happening and the only conclusion they could draw At this point Otto knew it, but somehow he kept putting his family first, he kept risking his fortune and taking incredible risks even though he knew his family was behind him and that's sad anyway, at this time Otto doesn't have The choice is Mako or the family, so in December 1982 the mouse brothers are fired from Mako, so what do you think will happen next?

The maish brothers walk away into the darkness, leaving Otto to have the company. Yes, I didn't think about it after he was fired. The Maish brothers pursued Otto by launching a smear campaign throughout Europe in the press and the most damaging was a malicious article that appeared in an English magazine. It was so bad that it instantly destroyed mako sales overnight and a British importer would later be quoted as saying that The article was written by a journalist who was a good friend of Peter Meisch, but now with the poor sales of the model In 1983, Otto desperately tried to borrow money and guarantee all the damaged bikes, but when the banks saw the stories in the press, they simply shut down.

They closed the door on him and didn't lend him any money and again at this point Otto has no choice if he wants to save the company, now he has to use his own money and that is exactly what he would do and he would soon deplete his life savings and He tried to save Mako, but by that time the damage from the internal sabotage had already been done. The brand name is garbage and the lawsuits continue to pile up. The rioters' injuries continue to pile up and after several years of shedding their blood sweat and his personal finances to save. his beloved company Otto has to capitulate and on May 10, 1983 Mako and Ottomish would be forced to declare bankruptcy and like the vultures that are the mouse brothers they would faint and take control of Mako and a company that once earned 23 million dollars in sales were bought for The Bargain Basement's price of US$100,000.

However, I will condemn it in an act of poetic justice or Karma, while the maish brothers achieved their goal of acquiring Mako somehow, Otto and his daughter owned the US headquarters and this was huge because Without the US market the Maish brothers were toast and despite their best efforts they were never able to wrest control from Otto and his daughter. Now the Maish brothers would try to take over until the mid 1980s by importing makos to the United States under the M Star name but by then the motorcycling public and dealers had banished the Mako brand to the arches of hell and a few years later The Maish brothers would cede control of Mako to an outside buyer since then the brand has changed hands many times. but despite their best efforts, no one has been able to return Mako to the greatness it once was.

I didn't mention racing too much because also, despite having a great bike and great riders like Danny Magoo Chandler, they somehow were never able to translate it. that to succeed under the rules of Under The Works in the professional series eventually Otto and Wilhelm would pass away and be buried under a pile of animosity and regret. Now I read somewhere that Wilhelm Jr would end up in a psychiatric facility for a short period of time. and the brothers would come in and out of the motorsports industry but they could never create anything close to what Mako was and as the saying goes your true enemy is never a stranger it's always someone you know and nothing could be most sincere when it comes to the Maishes.

Now, when making this video, there were two things that stood out more than anything else. One is that, as a Griev fan, I couldn't help but think about what could have been if they had put aside their differences. Would it be Mako? there today alongside the likes of Honda Yamaha Kawasaki Suzuki and KTM. I mean, we'll never know, but it seems like a waste and the second one would obviously be the level of hatred and sabotage between the families, I mean how far they would go. because greed and power just isn't awesome, it's

evil

, they built dangerous motorcycles on purpose to ruin the brand, but those engineering flaws seriously hurt innocent riders who trusted them and that's the worst sin and somehow I can't understand the fact that These two brothers were able to survive while the entire world was at war in one of the worst times in world history, but they still couldn't survive each other.

I once heard that blood does not make you family, what makes you family is loyalty, trust, respect and unity and the maishas assume that in reality they were never family, they were only related thanks for seeing applause abroad